Her feet were twitching
by PJC
Summary: Something Sara sees when she's young affects her whole future, probably only a few chapters. Better summary inside, just needed to put this out there. Please read. Contains violence but no character death.


_Read into this what you like, I just need to get it out there in the hope that it might leave my head. Please don't judge anything or presume anything from it, or if you do, please let me know but in a PM instead of a review. Fair warning, I'm not feeling entirely comfortable putting this out there, so I may delete it later. Please remember some things can have bigger consequences than you ever realise._

* * *

_OK, absolutely no idea where this is going, or even if its going to be overall happy or not, or the length, nothing, I just need to get something out of my head and this is the only thing that I can think of to help. Might go to a how it all started kind of thing. It probably won't be a light story though, it does involve Sara's parents, some things might not link up depending on if they come from the story of my head (that makes no sense), not sure how much of Sara's story in CSI will actually come into this, her dad might not be as bad in mine as in the show. Please review, I'll accept any gratefully as long as you don't say its not realistic, any others thank you in advance and especially for any advice you can offer me._

* * *

_Her feet were twitching._

A young Sara sat in the door to her grandma's, the front room on her left, her back to the doorframe. She could feel the long curtain tickling her leg at the side of her, she'd be able to see the different marks in pencil on the wallpaper under the curtain if she turned her head a little and looked directly upwards, each one had a date next to it. It had become a sort of ritual everytime she went to her grandmas, she would stand against the wall with her shoes off and her grandma would approach her with a pencil and draw a line above her head and date it.

She'd get a ruler out of the drawer nearby and measure how much she had grown since she had last come down to the millimetre.

Sara enjoyed her time at her grandmothers, where there was no shouting to be afraid of, it may be her fathers mother, but she was nothing like her dad, she was kind and didn't shout at her. She'd even written a poem about her when she'd been born and let Sara draw a picture of herself as a baby on later (well a copy of it at least). Occasionally she'd go overnight and share her grandma's big bed, they would lie awake for an hour or so, facing each other and talk and tell each other stories when she was very young.

_Her feet were twitching._

But Sara wasn't thinking about any of those things, she'd just been putting on her shoes when it happened, her skirt was tucked under her legs so that she could see her buckles, her socks were too small as well, she was only short and therefore only had small feet but her socks were still too small. She'd told her mum she didn't want to wear them that morning, but she didn't have any other clean ones left, no matter how often her socks were washed, or how little she wore them, she never seemed to have any clean socks left in her drawer.

She had had to pull them up before she put her shoe on so that they didn't slide down her ankle and try and gather around her toes, she'd already pulled them up 7 times before she had even been getting ready to go, and she'd only been there an hour.

They were white and had little white bows on the side, she'd never liked those socks, or the shoes she was wearing. They were shiny and stuck to each other when she put her feet too close and were hard to fasten.

_Her feet were twitching._

Her mum and dad weren't together at the time, her dad had found another woman and moved out of the house without any notice. They'd been visiting one of her mum's friends for a few days, her dad had even agreed without any problem but refused to go with them. Sara's mum had seemed relieved that he wasn't coming. Sara knew something was wrong but not what was wrong, Daddy had just been working a lot and she'd heard mummy crying a few days before, she just did as she was told so that nothing got any worse.

Then they'd got back and daddy wasn't there. She couldn't remember getting back, within a few years later she couldn't even remember how her mum had broken the news to her. All she knew was that daddy was gone, along with his clothes, a few photos from around the house and a few other things. The tool box had gone as well and one of the mobiles on her ceiling, it had had fish on it, with their mouths all pointing sidewards, she'd always wondered why and tended to think about it when she was in bed and could hear her parents shouting or couldn't sleep, she couldn't do that anymore, she just moved the sheep one so that it was centred above her bed and not to one side, leaving two holes either side in her ceiling where the drawing pins had been, and wondered why the sheep were jumping over fences.

The toolbox had gone as well, she'd had some glittery stars in there, she was going to paint a picture and put some sparkles on and glue the stars to the top for the night sky and now she couldn't. Her chalks had also been resting on the box, when she next went for them they were scattered everywhere, the box had fallen to the floor and the lid and popped open, the chalks had rolled everywhere and under various things, she never managed to find the dark blue again and had to put up without it whenever she drew pictures on the flags at the back of the house.

_Her feet were twitching._

Her and her mother had been visiting her grandma for an hour when her father arrived, she could see his car outside through the netting on the window, she could just make up a second shape as he got out of the car and saw her mum's in the driveway. Sara had been told to get ready to leave and put her shoes on. She knew that she didn't like the person in the car, part of her knew that the dim outline was the reason that daddy wasn't living at home, that mummy had been crying a lot, that she hadn't seen grandma as often recently, why her fish mobile had gone, and why she'd never made her picture with the sparkles on.

She hadn't asked her mum for another packet of glitter every again after that one was gone, she didn't seem to like using glitter at home anymore.

Her father had come charging in, demanding to know why her mum was there, when he'd arranged to see his mother then. Her grandma had tried to calm him down and move so that I couldn't see anything but he ignored her. I later wished she'd never moved and that she'd stayed further away from the door, but then knew that things might have worked out very differently if she hadn't been able to see things properly, but nobody should have to watch their son do that, turn into that kind of monster.

Sara's mum had tried to explain that she'd been in the area and didn't _need_ to arrange times for her daughter to see her grandmother. That they were welcome without having to make an appointment.

Sara was sat in the doorway, staring at her shoes, trying to get them to fasten so she could leave the house and take her mother with her and tell her grandma that she still loved her. Most of all she wanted to turn away so she couldn't see, but the best she could do was to sit there wrestling with her shoes.

She didn't look up as it carried on and as her dad marched towards the doorway she was sat in, her mother quickly retreating with each step he made towards the same doorway.

She pulled her legs up as her mother made it into the entrance room, the bottom of the stair case, their was only a small amount of wall you could actually get to. There used to be a mirror there but now it was just a blank wall with nothing on it.

_Her feet were twitching._

And that had been when it happened, her mother pressed against this small wall, something snapped in her father and he seemed to forget he had once loved the woman in front of him, that his mother and daughter was watching, he stopped been himself and turned into something else a monster.

With one arm movement he created an image which his daughter and probably his mother would never forget. He would, he'd cover it up, convince himself that something else had happened, he'd mentioned the incident later to Sara and had clearly convinced himself that the events of that day were different that they were. Her mother forgot some of it too, altered it in her memory to make it slightly more bearable before managing to lock it away at the back of her mind where it couldn't haunt her daily.

The image stayed forever ingrained in their daughter's mind. Her life as she had known it had subtly altered, some things would never quite be the same again, nothing would truly be the same again, her perspective had shifted slightly, she'd feel differently about some things.

Nothing major remained of that day, no lasting physical damage, everybody came out almost unharmed, but the fact that everyone was still breathing didn't change anything.

With one moment, with one arm movement, Sara's father had altered Sara's life forever and nothing would ever make it exactly the same again.

_Her feet were twitching._


End file.
